My name is Savaþ Encü
My name is Savaþ Encü
My name is Savaþ Encü.
I am one of eleven fatherless siblings…
I for a long time found it odd that I was given the name Savaþ (War), not Ramazan although I was born in the month of Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) …
I had only recently realized that I had opened my eyes into the territory of war, and planted hopes in my heart that my name could change only if the fate of this territory changed…
I knew I had to go to school to let my hopes get green and grow up. I was going to go to school, do what my siblings couldn’t do. I was going to water my hopes by going to school. However, the poverty which blocked the way of my siblings and silenced their dreams didn’t allow me either, I had to leave my school last year…
Poverty isn’t always the friend of unhappiness, despite everything we also had some happy times. We used to set up a swing on hug walnut trees of Roboski and made competitions with our friends, as well as football matches we organized…
We had run out of rice, sugar and butter at home, which meant a new “story of smuggling” ahead us… My elder brother Hüsnü and I got prepared for going. My other elder brother Vahit refused to send me as he was going to go himself. However, I had a chance to go as my mother, who would never let me go, was fortunately not home that day… Besides, I wasn’t going to be alone! My elder brother Hüsnü who used to protect me from all kinds of devil was also going to be with me…
Wearing the gloves which my elder brother Vahit bought me that day, I went after the “thirty four”… It is quite difficult to go smuggling in winter, especially more difficult in rain and mud…You have expensive trousers but the cold freezes our lungs…
It wasn’t only cold that burnt our lungs that night… We died because of fire balls that turned each of us into one pile of flesh. Me and my brother Hüsnü caught each other's eye after the first bomb was dropped on us. In his eyes, I saw the desperateness of someone who was about to die before seeing his child for whom he had been longing for eight years…And what he saw in my eyes couldn’t be anything other than the anger to the bombing of all those remaining from my hopes which run dry one by one…
‘We cannot know where death expects us’, used to say my brother Hüsnü, and I should confess that we were caught unprepared! None of us had thought we were going to fall into pieces and die burning in that snow and storm…
We were “thirty four smugglers”…
Do not forget to write “thirty four smugglers” down after the poem of “thirty three bullets”.
My name is Savaþ Encü, I am a sapling that fell down on the ground at the age of fourteen…
The death race continued along my whole life, ma êdî ne bes e!
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are
also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
I am one of eleven fatherless siblings…
I for a long time found it odd that I was given the name Savaþ (War), not Ramazan although I was born in the month of Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) …
I had only recently realized that I had opened my eyes into the territory of war, and planted hopes in my heart that my name could change only if the fate of this territory changed…
I knew I had to go to school to let my hopes get green and grow up. I was going to go to school, do what my siblings couldn’t do. I was going to water my hopes by going to school. However, the poverty which blocked the way of my siblings and silenced their dreams didn’t allow me either, I had to leave my school last year…
Poverty isn’t always the friend of unhappiness, despite everything we also had some happy times. We used to set up a swing on hug walnut trees of Roboski and made competitions with our friends, as well as football matches we organized…
We had run out of rice, sugar and butter at home, which meant a new “story of smuggling” ahead us… My elder brother Hüsnü and I got prepared for going. My other elder brother Vahit refused to send me as he was going to go himself. However, I had a chance to go as my mother, who would never let me go, was fortunately not home that day… Besides, I wasn’t going to be alone! My elder brother Hüsnü who used to protect me from all kinds of devil was also going to be with me…
Wearing the gloves which my elder brother Vahit bought me that day, I went after the “thirty four”… It is quite difficult to go smuggling in winter, especially more difficult in rain and mud…You have expensive trousers but the cold freezes our lungs…
It wasn’t only cold that burnt our lungs that night… We died because of fire balls that turned each of us into one pile of flesh. Me and my brother Hüsnü caught each other's eye after the first bomb was dropped on us. In his eyes, I saw the desperateness of someone who was about to die before seeing his child for whom he had been longing for eight years…And what he saw in my eyes couldn’t be anything other than the anger to the bombing of all those remaining from my hopes which run dry one by one…
‘We cannot know where death expects us’, used to say my brother Hüsnü, and I should confess that we were caught unprepared! None of us had thought we were going to fall into pieces and die burning in that snow and storm…
We were “thirty four smugglers”…
Do not forget to write “thirty four smugglers” down after the poem of “thirty three bullets”.
My name is Savaþ Encü, I am a sapling that fell down on the ground at the age of fourteen…
The death race continued along my whole life, ma êdî ne bes e!
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are
also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
